Chapter 1: Munchnones and mesoionic heterocycles The reactivity, regioselectivity, and synthetic applications of munchnones (1,3-oxazolium-5-olates) is a common theme which runs through Chapters 2-5. The definition, structure, and reactivity of...

A yearly breast contrast-MR scan is recommended to high-risk women because of MR's high sensitivity to breast tumors. However, breast contrast-MR yields a high number of false positives that lead to expensive and sometimes unnecessary biopsy...

Continual improvements to clinical breast imaging technologies have led to ever earlier detections and increasingly accurate localizations of female breast cancers. While these advancements have certainly improved the prognoses of many patients,...

The demand for novel molecularly targeted drugs will continue to rise as we make progress toward personalizing cancer treatments to the molecular signatures of individual tumors. While the collection and analysis of genomic data has become routine,...

Brain tissue mechanics are an important biomarker for neurological disorders, yet methods to obtain tissue information yield inconsistent conclusions. These techniques can be invasive or require excised tissue, where tissue function is altered from...

As the visual effect and movie industries are striving for realism and high fidelity images, physically based lighting, global illumination, realistic materials, and highly tessellated geometry are gradually accepted and used in movie and game...

MicroRNA-10b (miR-10b) is considered a marker of disease aggressiveness in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), in view of the fact that lower levels of miR-10b are associated with better response to neoadjuvant therapy, likelihood of surgical...

Magnetic nanoparticle-based hyperthermia for cancer treatment is a promising technology, particularly when applied as part of an adjuvant strategy with established cancer therapies (chemotherapy, radiation and surgery). In Europe, early clinical...

Estradiol is a key regulator of immune protection in the female reproductive tract (FRT). Its concentration varies during the menstrual cycle, leading to changes in innate immune protection. In this thesis, I demonstrate the multiple levels at...

Radio relics are extended regions of synchrotron radio emission that have been found in the outskirts of a few dozen galaxy clusters. Relics are often associated with clusters undergoing merger activity. They are not associated optically with a...

Accurate chromosome segregation in human oocytes requires that meiotic sister chromatid cohesion remain intact for decades and work in model organisms indicates that deterioration of meiotic cohesion over time may be a major determinant of...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the USA and worldwide causing 160,000 and 1.5 million deaths per year, respectively. Due to the late stage of diagnosis, poor efficacy of chemotherapies (targeted and pleiotropic), and...

Thermodynamics, and the classic balance between entropy and enthalpy, provides a proverbial zoo of exotic phase behaviour that chemists can harness to create new materials out of simple liquids and polymers. The diversity of self-assembling...

We have a limited understanding of how an opinion is originated, how an opinion and information supporting and explaining it gets conveyed, and how the communicated opinion is perceived and processed by others. One direction of current research...

Purple sulfur bacteria (PSB) can dominate the nitrogen, carbon, and sulfur cycles in anoxic ecosystems via their anoxygenic photosynthetic metabolisms and are the only producers of the carotenoid, okenone, a biomarker targeted for photic zone...

The purpose of this thesis is to describe methods for detecting hidden crevasses on glaciers in Polar regions. Crevasses form in ice sheets as a result of forces imposed upon the brittle ice. The crevasses are hidden from view by bridges of soft...

Objectives: This dissertation comprises three essays on geographic variations in healthcare, and the association between utilization and health outcomes. I first explore associations between outpatient visits and Medicare beneficiaries'...

Many organisms recognize and respond to categories: predator, prey, rival, or juvenile. Organisms recognize these ecologically-important categories by assessing diverse sensory stimuli. A primary focus of my research has been understanding how...

During our fieldwork with real-world organizations---including those in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), network configuration management, and the electrical power grid---we repeatedly noticed that security policies and related security artifacts...

Nanoparticles have made significant advances in recent years in the realm of cancer therapy. These nanoparticles typically range in size from 10-250nm in diameter, allowing for differential systemic-based biodistribution. The enhanced permeability...

Si/SiGe quantum dots (QDs) are promising candidates for spin-based quantum bits (qubits) as a result of the reduced spin-orbit coupling as well as the Si isotopes with zero nuclear spin. Meanwhile qubit readout is a challenge related to...

As methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) hospitalizations keep increasing, the understanding of the characteristics that make one isolate more successful over another is paramount. Strain variations among Staphylococcus aureus observed...

Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) and their associated cyclins are key regulators of cell cycle progression. Caenorhabditis elegans has two predicted A- type cyclins, encoded by the genes cya-1 and cya-2. Cyclin A has been shown to be required for...

Molecular optical imaging in vivo has potential for functional assessment of tumor tissue at the cellular and subcellular level. Advances in biological understanding of genomics and proteomics have increased the knowledge of possible cellular...

A new type of analytic expansion for use in stability calculations is presented and applied to the question of the stability of laminar solutions of the Navier-Stokes equation. This leads in a natural way to a model of the transition from laminar...

Patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) are susceptible to respiratory tract infections at an early age; with the most frequent initial isolate being the Gram-positive pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. Subsequently, these patients become chronically...